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Good relationships get better with time, and the best relationships feel like they take no time at all. Making our way through just our third year in Peru (and our second with these partners), we’ve already made fast friends with some of the most capable partners we’ve come across in our two decades of importing. Granted, it may have taken every one of those twenty years to prepare us to represent these particular producers, to equip us with the tools it takes to succeed in this country.
Regardless of place, the most critical prerequisite for quality coffee is having the right people on board. Our approach is to set a high bar for quality, with prices to match, and to connect these dots with a direct line between the cupping lab and the farm. In tandem with field agronomists, this can result in tight feedback loops that allow even single farmers with small (3 – 10 bag) collections to get full attention in time to make adjustments. With this degree of communication and calibration taking place year-round, the harvest itself becomes a collaboration to push as much volume past the goalpost as possible.
When all of these factors align, we have both the confidence and the enthusiasm to petition social impact investors to underwrite expensive microlots—a novel, risky practice for financiers—while we forward-contract based on quality, opening up the pre-harvest financing that our partners need to succeed.
Our lending partner in Peru is Progreso, an organization that comes up quickly in any conversation about our work here. Heading into the 2025 harvest, we worked with Progreso to apply the principles of the Good Coffee Program, the system we’ve been using to purchase microlots in Mexico for several years now. In Mexico, GCP replaced the traditional supply chain with a value chain of agronomists, millers, and cuppers who continue paving the way for specialty-minded smallholders, with participation ballooning year after year.
Producer structures are, however, very different in Peru. Competent cooperatives provide superior support and organization on a foundational level. They have the ability to get individual farm lots to export, but have historically lacked the contracts, cuppers, financing, and member programming to push 86+ microlots through them. Peruvian cooperatives rely on tight commercial contracts for financing, receiving up to 70% of the export value of a commercial coffee—simply not enough to play in specialty.
In other words, even though member farmers may be growing competition-level coffees, and even though the cooperatives’ international customers may want them, most cooperatives have not been in a position to support, educate, or purchase from high specialty-minded members.
Therefore, our work with Progreso focuses on pre-financing microlot programs for participating cooperatives—a proposition much more complicated than simply buying smaller lots. Progreso’s Agroforestry programs provided the foundation to make this possible, with lower/medium altitude farms receiving shade trees or certifications, and higher altitude members receiving nurseries for specialty seedlings, access to a rotating fund for drying beds and fermentation tanks, as well as education through both agronomist-led workshops on plant and soil health as well as CQI-certified support for post-harvest processing. In the end, the premiums earned from microlot sales go back toward funding these cooperative-wide programs, with a portion directly to the producer and the remainder sustaining the services that made them possible.
With the uptick in smaller lots comes the imperative of investing in cupping labs close enough to the farms to enable separate collections early in the process, concurrently educating farmers and building trust in the network. These “field labs” must be calibrated with the cooperative’s central lab, and furthermore with their international customers. Underlying these requirements is the assurance that the cooperatives have secured enough advance contracts (and priced them attractively enough) to compete with local roasters, auctions, and blind speculation.
It is, obviously, a lot of work! Most cooperatives agree that Specialty is more of an investment in the future than what will feed them this season. But especially for groups with younger, forward-thinking leadership, there is tremendous energy for bringing this future to fruition—and these are the groups we are best positioned to work with.
To find them, we first spoke with roasters who had extensive experience and deep relationships in Peru, then with the producers they recommended. In parallel, we interviewed Progreso’s existing client cooperatives, contacting cuppers and competition winners to narrow our scope down to a short list. This resulted in a network of five organizations across the regions of Cajamarca/Jaen in the north and Cusco in the south.
We entered 2025 with 4 total containers contracted from these 5 groups. Then harvest hit, offers started flowing, and they were good—very good. So many offers came through that there was no doubt about demand for a program like this on the supply side, and their quality was strong enough that they created their own demand among roasters. By July of last year, we had doubled our import volume, and by August it doubled again.
Historically, we have found that Year Two with a supplier is when we see the greatest lift from relationship purchasing. This is when coffees moves from being “block” produced (without a specific customer in mind) to bespoke—this coffee for this customer. All suppliers are given a sales and quality report that includes a list of the roasters who purchased their coffees, allowing us to conduct conversations on a lot-by-lot basis.
Last year these discussions were concentrated to the lab and cooperative level, but this year we’re pushing more discourse to the member level. In the lab, we have target profiles and reference samples in place—concrete, specific examples of what has been well received. In the field, we have the Progreso agronomy groups conducting workshops and farm visits, and CQI certified training for post-harvest processing. With prices posted per cup score, the full framework was well-established by the beginning of the northern harvest in May.
Right away, however, there were indications that la roya and exceptional climate challenges were going to cost farmers a considerable portion of their yields—as much as 40%. We were able to push some large lots to export in June and July, but had to push others back. In addition to decreased yields, farmers were facing a volatile bullish market, increasing speculation as well as the costs of mobilizing coffee for contracts.
Our first trip of the season was in August, when Danny was able to connect with our partners up north, cupping through the first flush of microlots. While a good amount of coffee remains on farm, enough has started flowing through warehouses again for cooperatives to catch up on export contracts.
Now in September, Progreso will be conducting their post-harvest processing trainings, and we will wrap up our Cajamarca/Jaen/Amazonas purchasing for the year.
Come October, we will shift attention to partners in the Cusco area of the south, with an additional visit in the late fall/early winter.
Progreso is the nucleus of our entire Peruvian network. Their relationships run deep, and include above-and-beyond assistance everywhere from administration to accounting to financing to education. Their agroforestry program is tailored to each cooperative, and they continue to grow—El Morito, for example, a producers’ group that we purchased from last year, was onboarded with Progreso between seasons, allowing them to enter 2026 with pre-crop financing at otherwise unbankable prices.
Really, “the team” is a massive nesting doll of teams within teams, participating in a range of activities too wide for any one group. The past year has included plenty of technical accomplishments—calibrating target water activity and moisture metrics from collection point to cooperative to lab, administering Q-Processing workshops, etc. But it has also had many of the softer, creative and collaborative touch points that often take far more years to accumulate: new stencil designs inspired by indigenous rock paintings (shout out Tatiana!), Christmas toy drives, Whatsapps with just as many Happy Birthdays as links to spreadsheets.
As we highlighted in last season’s Harvest Review (linked here), through built-in contract contributions plus an initial seed contribution, we were able to generate $40,000 in additional funds for Progreso programming over the course of the 2025 harvest cycle—a sum that everyone involved is rightly proud of. Heading into 2026, the goal was to expand this impact outward, looping in our key partners at The Chain Collaborative to bring the Mestiza Women’s Project (a part of the Aromas del Valle cooperative) into their Community-Led Incubator Program (more about that here, and see Merly Leon below). Among other priorities, they are planning to establish a children’s library at their meeting site, where kiddos are consistent understudies while their mothers work through the administrative nitty gritty.
In addition to the collaboration between the Mestiza Project and The Chain Collaborative, our friends at ADV made a few other strategic changes this season as well. Foremost, they opened two new field labs for early intake cupping, one in San Ignacio. They invested in a water activity meter to better monitor quality from collection through export, and also brought on a third-party export mill with superior equipment, improving their ability to yield smaller, zero-defect contracts, and to better preserve the quality of microlots arriving during peak harvest. This focus on smaller lots has paid off, with a container of microlots setting sail any day now (first half of September).
With pre-harvest financing for the first time while still riding the high of last year’s success, El Morito elected to make a fairly formidable overhaul to their longstanding family company. They chose to prioritize sales to North American roasters through Crop to Cup, scaling up smaller lots (10 – 20 bags rather than 30 – 40). These decisions required investments in processing at the family level, and an agreement to centralize decision-making during the harvest. It also came with a new General Manager, bringing a sharper focus on operations and execution. So far, quality has been excellent, and shipments are scheduled for early September and early October.
Unfortunately, our Amazonas-based partners Eber and Evelin Sanchez were hit hardest by this season’s la roya, with the vast majority of their early harvest going directly to the national market in order to maintain liquidity. Though behind on contracts, they’re catching up now, with post-harvest processing training happening this month and shipments targeted for October. Their case is a reminder of how challenging it can be to truly get Specialty off the ground—top varietals in this region were planted only four years ago, and the area is still very much acclimating to the model.
Harvest in the south is just getting going, and we are planning to hold off on visiting till peak offers emerge in early December. Last year, we worked with San Fernando in Inkawasi and Huadquiña in Santa Teresa, with the former proving especially capable of pushing through superb microlots. In hindsight, our timing was a bit off—we made the mistake of attempting to compress the disparate timelines of North and South, and were therefore too early to grab the best of the best from Inkawasi. At high elevations, premier offers in this area just get started in October, and continue through the holidays, with shipping targets early in the New Year. The demand for these coffees is clear as day, so our focus this season is on fleshing out and deepening our supply network, in terms of both producer relationships and export logistics. We will certainly have more to report on this aspect of our efforts later this year.
We are both proud and humbled by how smoothly and swiftly our work has scaled in Peru. It’s a perfect example of how long it takes to do things quickly—two (technically three) years here, but only after 18 years of trials, errors, triumphs and tribulations elsewhere. There is still so much room for improvement, but our collaborative momentum is pushing us clearly in the right direction. Perhaps time flies fastest when you’ve spent enough time preparing for lift off.
As we continue evaluating offers from the North and begin shifting our sights to the South, it’s not too late for you to come along for the ride—get in touch with your trader if you want to see Peru on your menu this winter and spring.
Uganda, 2026
We’ve said it before, but we’re saying it again: Uganda is back, baby. Back to the days before the paradigm-shaking collapse of our longtime relationship with the centralized cooperative BUCOFA in 2019, chronicled here. When we say it now, we can point to how this claim has earned its resonance, and we can highlight the individuals who embody it. No one does so more fully than Masha Coffee, Sylvia and Alfred Achebet’s project that this year completed its first export of coffees processed at its new site, high up Mt. Elgon. Their story is worth amplifying for its success and how we believe it operates as a blueprint for more Ugandan actors in the near future, but also because it has been riddled with frustrations and setbacks—as true stories tend to be.
This piece is more tightly focused than our standard harvest reviews or previews. It is about one partner, what they’ve accomplished, the literal fruits of those labors now en route to North America, what’s on the horizon heading into future seasons, and how you can help. At the same time, it’s a reminder that doing just about everything right does not always make for smooth sailing.
To more deeply explore any of the additional Ugandan partners rounding out this new era, click on their image below. Otherwise, read on for more about Masha.
It’s tricky for us to discuss Uganda without retracing our company’s history, because—as most reading this likely already know—Uganda is where we started. Our work here began in 2005, and marked the country’s first quality-driven specialty initiative, a collaborative effort that involved establishing micro washing stations. By 2010, we had ironed out our operations to an extent that felt sustainable and showed us what was possible, but by the end of that decade, as farmer groups splintered and stations were eventually absorbed by multinational groups, we chose to step away and work exclusively with Ugandan-owned operations. In doing so, we learned that piecemeal agronomic and logistical support do not produce 86+ pt coffees. Consistently exceptional coffee requires a localized, resilient ecosystem, and an abundance of infrastructure dedicated to precision rather than volume.
It has taken us nearly a decade of searching for partners, coaxing financiers, recruiting producers and mill managers, and chasing talent everywhere we could find it—but right now, we really believe we have. Connecting with Sylvia, Alfred, and Masha Coffee in 2022 was perhaps the most critical turning point. The introduction came through our longtime friend Clare, who ran Quality and Education for the Uganda Coffee Development Authority, and who we first met just as things were falling apart in Bulaago—one door closing, another opening. In her role with the UCDA, Clare cupped just about every coffee that moved through the country, and organized its national harvest competitions. We’d long appreciated her help to aggregate samples and cup on our behalf, and when we asked her who in Uganda was doing the best work, she brought us to Sylvia.
But long before winning us over, Sylvia and her husband Alfred had earned the trust of their community through years working as a nurse and doctor in their home district of Kween. Sylvia’s progression from clinician to coffee producer replays a sentiment we’ve heard from many rural health care professionals: you need acute care to treat symptoms, but to meaningfully influence causes—stabilize income. She already had the standing and the space for it, including a giant tree on the family property that neighbors had nicknamed “the boardroom.” With help from Alfred, she launched Masha from the family farm in 2019, and as her profile grew throughout and beyond the community, more and more visitors began stopping by “the boardroom,” facilitating NGO funding for community training and outreach, which she used to build early infrastructure like solar drying beds.
Eventually, with participation exceeding the initial site’s capacity, the Achebets broke ground on a new washing station in Kabeywa, near Sipi Falls, at an elevation of 1,900 meters, with a collection zone running from 1,800 up to 2,400. In addition to the raw altitude advantages, this location and the mill’s construction were designed to be fiercely self-contained, in response to how difficult the place can be to access and how vulnerable the surrounding roads are to washouts. To mitigate uncontrolled fermentation from transit delays, Masha processes deep into the night as deliveries arrive, employing precise bypass demucilaging and temperature-calibrated fermentation protocols. Drying is equally methodical: a brief phase of full-sun drip drying and hand-picking, followed by controlled rotation in fully vented greenhouses over 7 – 12 days to slowly stabilize moisture content and water activity. The processing is supervised by Sylvia’s sister, Eunice, a trained agronomist who more recently earned CQI Processing credentials as well.
With the station complete and the team assembled, 2026 was set to be Masha’s first year exporting coffee processed from its own headquarters, and we shouldn’t diminish the accomplishment—they did it, and did it well. Using the sweetest, highest-Brix count cherries in the region, their slow, well-calibrated wet fermentation yielded a remarkably clean and vibrantly tropical profile, reminding us of ripe pineapple and passionfruit. At every sampling juncture, the quality has held up, and with nearly 300 bags produced, that is truly an accomplishment that we can’t wait to share once these coffees arrive later in August.
But as the timeline implies, things did not unfold as intended. In late 2025, as the season was beginning, Masha again ran into issues with its “impact fund” financing partner, Exim Uganda. Like the previous year, Exim did not disburse Masha’s approved funds until December, lagging behind the harvest and sending them into a scramble to concentrate purchasing. Additionally, they released only 60% of Masha’s approved line, ~10% lower than industry standard, forcing their hands in terms of milling and export partners. At that point, the situation deteriorated even further, with a much higher-than-anticipated milling loss, decreasing an expected 330 bag total lot size down to 290.
Even with all of the work, all of the trust building in the community and investment in the infrastructure—their trajectory was still derailed.
As far as intermediary orchestration is concerned, plans have been made to do better next year. This time, however, the best we could do was maintain a fair FOB price plus an additional buffer that will allow us to invest more in their operation ahead of the next harvest. Strategically, we’ll be linking them with Progreso and Root Capital for more diversified credit next season, and steering them toward The Coffee Yard for dry-milling. The link with The Coffee Yard should also help Masha level up aspects of their accounting, pinning them to a model in line with the cost-plus cherry buying framework that we successfully piloted with TCY this year. Thankfully, there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken—their wet mill did indeed yield strong volume of excellent coffee, so the priority is assembling the right pieces around it.
In addition to facilitating the right connections outside of Masha, we’re also excited to contribute directly to an improvement right on site—a kitchen. The washing station itself was finished only last year, and its conspicuous status as a shiny new spectacle has turned it into something greater than the sum of its coffee infrastructural parts. Like the “boardroom” once upon a time, this place is now a hub of all sorts. Agronomists and field mobilizers use it to hold training sessions and distribute seedlings. During harvest, farmers work their fields in the morning, then head to Kabeywa in the afternoon to deliver cherry. As we and everyone in the area knows all too well, rains often make it impossible to return home when planned, meaning farmers are often stuck waiting out washed-out roads well into the evening. Add in the 20+ staff working the station through peak season, and there are a lot of mouths to feed.
With all that in mind, the team’s proposal for a community kitchen feels extremely apt. For our part, we’re looking to raise $15,000, and contributions from roasters can go a tremendous way in bringing this vision to fruition faster.
In spite of the challenges, Masha is our blueprint for what Ugandan coffee can be when we have this level of processing precision taking place at such high altitudes.
What’s even more exciting is that Masha is not an isolated success. What’s happening there is part of a broader and still-widening pipeline of stellar Ugandan coffee projects helmed by Ugandans. This season, also from Mt. Elgon, we had even more logistical success with Norman from The Coffee Yard, whose coffees landed in May and have been ripping off the cupping table—at time of writing, there are still 4 lots with some spot availability.
Looking ahead to December, Barbara from Kwezi Coffee is preparing to export a mixed specialty container that bridges Uganda’s premier regions, combining lots from her homeland in the western Rwenzori mountains with early-harvest microlots from Mt. Elgon in the east.
Furthermore, we are preparing for massive scale in the coming year. We mentioned Progreso earlier, and gave them much-deserved attention in an earlier write-up on our work in Peru, and lining them up here in Uganda will prove to be huge. They are currently deploying capital to upgrade quality infrastructure across several partner cooperatives, all set to come online next season.
Yes, we really do mean it—Uganda is back. It’s not exactly the same Uganda where we started operating back in 2005, and the multinationals may still have their volume, but meaningful infrastructure for true, traceable specialty coffee is again in the hands of the producers. To us, this feels like home.
Get in touch to grab some of Masha’s 2026 export and secure your spot for the stellar seasons to come.
PREFACE
2026 marks our second serious import from Vietnam, spearheaded by brooklyn-based lab manager Erinn Buhyoff. In total, our Vietnamese offerings represent a wonderfully wide spectrum of coffees from an equally complementary cluster of partners: approachably familiar washed Arabica from Zanya, process-driven experiments from Loc Rung, and paradigm-shifting Robusta from Great Cherry. The third of these categories is what sparked this piece—an exploration of how to improve upon antiquated approaches for assessing the character and quality of specialty caliber Canephora, as the species is largely referred to below.
What follows here is a deservingly thorough, open-minded, and disciplined treatment of sample roasting for Canephora. Our hope is that these experiments empower more roasters to invite these coffees onto their cupping tables—and, eventually, menus. The scope is deliberately restricted to sample roasting because we believe that this is the foundational prerequisite for everything that follows: cupping, production roasting, brewing. There is ample room for discussion on all of the subsequent stages of the coffees’ trajectories, but there has been far too little examination of this early step. Our goal is to begin remedying this, and as always—we invite you into the conversation.
Click here to browse all of our landed Vietnamese coffees and request your own samples.
And now, without further ado, read on for Erinn Buhyoff’s Roasting Canephora for Evaluation.
INTRODUCTION
While standardized roasting techniques for Arabica have become clearer and clearer in recent years, the subject of roasting Canephora (Robusta) remains relatively arcane in comparison. The industry dominance that Canephora enjoyed in the pre-“3rd wave” past would suggest an abundance of data poised to establish a baseline of standardized roast approaches—but this is not the case. Robusta’s heyday predates rigorous roastlogging, belonging to an era when data collection was not standard practice, thereby relegating much of that information to trade-secrets, or even myth. Either way, Canephora has changed significantly in the contemporary industry, as have our tools, techniques, and even taste preferences, thereby requiring the pioneering few to deconstruct modern roasting standards—developed with Arabica in mind—and rebuild, recentering Canephora. Recent developments with Canephora have been powered by producers in the field, and brewing science developments have elevated this once “ugly duckling” of the industry to a product worthy of the meticulous attention that Arabica has long commanded. And so we find ourselves here to help build the bridge between these two sides, with the objective of bringing that same level of focus to Canephora roasting.
OBJECTIVE
We will be focusing on roasting for cupping lab evaluation, and this setting will dictate our objectives.
In the cupping lab, our primary concerns will be:
METHODS/EQUIPMENT
These guidelines will help us reduce our own roasting bias, creating a level playing field for each sample that we are evaluating. We will be using the Kaffelogic Nano 7 Sample Roaster as our machine, and creating repeatable and executable roast profiles to roast each sample, fine tuning to achieve uniformity and quality preservation. The fluid-bed and roast-from-room-temperature nature of this roaster allows us to nullify a few common variables in roasting, namely thermal energy transfer from drum contact influencing development, and initial thermal momentum variance between roasts. The small batch size (50g) also allows us to stretch our sample material over the course of more roast trials than would otherwise be possible. For each roast profile tested we will record weight loss at different time intervals to map the drying profile. We will also record Whole Bean and Ground color numbers to compare exterior and interior/average roast development between roast profiles. Each roast will then be cupped blind by our lab team for evaluation, with the goal of selecting the roast that best preserves the intrinsic qualities of the coffee. Our cupping protocols will follow the CQI R-Grading standards. After multiple cupping rounds, the best performing roast profiles will be reviewed for roast batch consistency, comparing several roasts of the same profile.
The coffee that we selected to use for these tests is a Robusta Sẻ honey process from Đắk Lắk, Vietnam, available to us via Great Cherry. This coffee has a moisture content of 10.8% and a relatively high density of 850g/L, and has been extensively milled to ensure minimal defects that would influence roast consistency. We selected this coffee because of its small spherical bean morphology, its screen-size consistency, its standard processing type (for Canephora, honey and natural process are more common processes than washed, with honey giving us a clearer look with regards to roast quality differences), and the varietal being of a non-hybrid type. Our average score for this coffee is an 84 using the CQI Robusta Grading Form, which is on the higher end of our average Canephora scoring, meaning that sensorially this coffee has more than enough complexity to explore and refine through our roast experiments. The color meter we will be using is the Le Brew RoastSee Fusion, which has been calibrated to a Lighttells CM-200, and measured on the Agtron scale.
THEORY/APPROACH
Canephora has the reputation of being very difficult to roast evenly from the exterior of the bean to its interior. To contextualize this difference when compared to Arabica, one only needs to look CQI’s acceptable color number difference between WB/G (Whole Bean/Ground, Whole Bean measuring only the exterior color, and Ground measuring an average color throughout the bean, and thus a better measurement of the interior development) as defined in their recommended roasting guidelines for each species. Internally, we are referring to the spread between the exterior and interior colors as the “development delta.” The recommended Agtron roast color WB/G for Arabica is 58/63—a delta of 5—while the recommended Agtron roast color WB/G for Canephora is 48/78—a delta of 30. Our roasting approach will take this target into account, especially as it pertains to other variables.
Our bean shape and density are also very important to consider here, as our applied heat will have a more difficult time penetrating denser beans (exacerbating this interior/exterior development issue with Canephora), and high variance in bean shape would result in individual beans reacting to the roast profile in differing ways, resulting in potential roast defects. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, our test coffee provides us with an extremely consistent test subject in terms of bean shape, and its high density forces us to tackle the issue of balanced exterior/interior bean development head-on.
We also want to optimize our fan speed profile to aid our efforts of efficient and even development. Since we are using a fluid bed roaster, our fan speed will determine our agitation, as well as our thermal energy retention and expenditure. As coffee dries throughout the roast, it loses water and becomes less dense, requiring less fan speed to suspend and agitate the coffee as it continues drying. By tracking weight loss incrementally through the roast, we can see how the density of the coffee mass changes, and develop a fan speed profile that is appropriate.
Finally we want these puzzle pieces to come together with our evaluation goals in mind: consistency, repeatability, and minimal roast defects/imparted flavors. Our ideal roast profile will be able to clearly and transparently present the flavor profile of the green coffee, yielding a result that is neither too-dark or too-light. Finding this balance while ensuring even development will be our guiding light through our trials.
TESTS
We will begin by comparing the two most common starting points for roasting Canephora: one is the mythical “Low & Slow” Robusta approach, while the other is a standard washed Arabica profile. Each will be a 50g batch size, with varying heat and airflow applications. The specific profiles we’ll use to cover these two categories are the Kaffelogic Core Profiles of “KL Robusta” and “KL Washed” (each shown below). We will use these profiles to track the drying profile of the test coffee (measuring when and how much water loss the coffee is experiencing at varying intervals throughout the roast), which will inform our optimized fan/airflow profile for this coffee. We will also track the WB/G color numbers of these roast profiles at varying roast times to compare their relative interior-exterior roast consistency. Finally, we will cup the results of each test roast. Following all of this, we will create new roast profiles based on our weight loss tracking, color number data, and cupping preferences.
RESULTS
Following these tests, we can make a few observations comparing the test profiles. First and foremost our results suggest that the KL Robusta “Low & Slow” approach results in a greater development delta than the KL Washed profile, which has a more aggressive though controlled heat application (see Fig. 01a). We also found the KL Robusta profiles to produce dulled and muted flavors on the cupping table compared to the KL Washed. While “softening” the flavor profile and muting undesirable flavors may be preferable when dealing with lower quality coffees, it is not aligned with our goal of getting a clear picture of any given coffee, which requires us to preserve the good AND the bad.
The drying behavior of Canephora during the roast also yielded interesting findings. Overall, Canephora loses its water more slowly than Arabica, which means in a fluid-bed setting we will have to use higher fan speeds over longer periods of time in order to maintain proper agitation throughout the roast (see Fig 02a). We can also determine that the standard development range for Arabica with the KL Washed profile is much too light for Canephora, suggesting that Canephora indeed does need significantly more development time and higher roast temperatures to reach color numbers and relative development similar to what we are accustomed to from Arabica.
Compared to the KL Robusta roasts, the KL Washed roasts were much more dynamic, providing us with clearer and higher resolution sensorial experiences for any given test. Our cuppings yielded a preference for roasts in the range of 14-15% weight loss, whole bean color number range 65-75, ground color number range 115-125, and average total roast time of 7 minutes, which we determined to be an optimal range to perceive the widest range of intrinsic green coffee qualities, with minimal imparted roast flavors. Below the 55-60 range for whole bean color, we found the exterior of the bean to be developing too much roasty flavor for proper evaluation, while anything above 130 ground color number was grainy and lacked fullness and sweetness. While we would ideally like the development delta to be tighter, we found this range to be acceptable for these tests, leaving room for improvement that we’ll continue workshopping.
With these observations we’ve created new roast profiles that address our experienced issues, landing on a profile with an aggressive heat application (in order to address the development delta and to avoid dulling the flavor profile), an optimal fan profile for Canephora (due to drying differences when compared to Arabica), and fits our preferred development range.
R3 is this profile, with a target total roast time of ~7:05 and weight loss of 15% (see Fig. 03). We found this profile to fit our sensorial preferences and requirements better than the initial core profiles, as well as our earlier test profiles. Sensorially the roasts from R3 consistently provided clearly developed sweetness and body, while preserving subtle fruit and acidity qualities, and minimal imparted roast flavor. Our range of WB/G color numbers also improved to 75/124, though our desired and expected improvement was greater. Further adjustments can be made to the roast and fan profile curves to improve this, while hopefully maintaining or even improving the clarity and complexity that this profile is currently providing in the cup.
If you’re a Kaffelogic user, click here to download the profile.
CONCLUSION
As is often the case in coffee roasting, each roast reveals immense knowledge about the physical characteristics of any given coffee. Through many roast trials (& errors), we have learned so much about what makes Canephora unique, with so much more to uncover through further roasting. We have found out for ourselves that Canephora fundamentally requires more average development than Arabica, not only for the sake of its flavor profile, but also to ensure that the interior of the bean is being properly developed. Suffice it to say, if a Canephora roast appears to be a reasonable “light-roast” from the outside, there’s a good chance that the interior of the bean is significantly underdeveloped. We have also found that the difficult-to-penetrate Canephora beans respond poorly to slow, sluggish heat application, and more evenly develop when roasted with a more focused and aggressive roast profile (Arabica roasters may see a parallel here with high density Kenyan coffees). Finally, and most importantly, we have found not just an appropriate development range for lab evaluation, but also a development range for Canephora that fits our own palate preferences, which allows us to set an important reference point for work with Canephora going forward. Improvements still need to be made concerning the development delta, though I have faith that the theory and practical developments necessary to address this are imminent. There is also a whole world of processing types and varietals (arguably greater than that of Arabica) to apply these findings to, in order to find more generalized best roasting practices for Canephora, along with inevitable exceptions to these rules. We encourage roasters with the means to join us in this adventure—exploring the vast, long-hidden world of Canephora, repeating and refining our tests, making new discoveries, and igniting new passions in coffee.
We have no doubt that Canephora Roasting theory will soon catch up to its counterparts in agronomy and brewing, and we’re proud to be playing our part.
This update comes from our Sourcing Lead for Mexico, Jake Elster. Unless otherwise credited, all photos by Israel Paz.
Coffee is not grown in a laboratory, where one has control over every granular detail, but comes from a far grander context—where the best one can aim for is some small measure of influence. Perhaps nowhere drives this point home more clearly than Mexico.
This year has been no exception. Our core goals were to increase volume, refine the workflow with Denso (our core farmer outreach and quality analysis partners in Oaxaca), and to export earlier. We succeeded in the first two respects, but are currently looking at arrivals in July and August—a bit later than we hoped. Especially in Mexico, however, two out of three is a huge win.
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After all, this is a place with enormous natural advantages—lush and varied ecosystems, deep cultural knowledge and gobsmacking charisma. But where it wins in overall panache, it has an equal share of challenges: marked deficits of trust, infrastructure, cooperation, financing, and state support. Both extremes are particularly pronounced in the pre-Hispanic, indigenous coffee growing communities that populate the high elevations across the country’s south—where we operate. Since Crop to Cup first started buying in Guerrero in 2012, every season has reinforced that no two harvests are ever alike, and yet that none exist in isolation—with the transition from optimist to cynic as the fruit moves from the trees to the cupping table one of the few inevitable constants.
In this grand and often infuriating context, we need to accept that while we can’t control much, we can control our process. The process for getting coffees from the farm to a quality lab, and then to export. A process that accounts for emergent personalities and problems, that communicates pricing and payment in a way that’s open, clear and fair to all. Through process we can align education and communication in a way that aligns everyone’s understanding of ‘improvement’. Processes are “how”; instead of what. And while no one has control over what happens during a harvest, we can control “how” smallholder farmers get specialty coffees to international markets. By focusing on process we can, in turn, review and improve upon these processes every year. That’s to say continual improvement is something that can be controlled, even if coffee is not.
Our process is called the Good Coffee Program (read more here), and before diving into this year’s work, we’ll calibrate with a bit of background.
Starting in 2023, Crop to Cup started purchasing in a different way: a direct export channel for smallholders under the intentionally innocuous title ‘Good Coffee Program’. This purchasing platform focuses on a fair, clear and consistent process for pricing and purchasing coffees directly from smallholder groups. These efforts align with community-level field schools, escuelas de campo, around which working groups are formed and organized into associations, then cooperatives.
Entering the 2025 harvest (last year), this program was on the up. It had grown from a pilot program in Southern Puebla (Sierra Negra) to ally with the state agencies behind the escuelas de campo programs, and had just inked a partnership with USAID-funded SURGES program who was to co-invest in training, administrative capacity, and quality infrastructure.
Then the markets spiked, cresting the four-dollar mark, squeezing supplier lines of credit and freezing the finalization of contracts while roasters waited to see if it would go down. Then Trump issued tariffs—it’s easy to forget now, but when first introduced, Mexico was the only coffee producing country impacted. Unfortunately, this news came during the coffee harvest, adding more uncertainty to the mix. Then, as if this was not enough, USAID lost its funding—and when it did, so did the SURGES program. While the community relationships remained, there was no extra support for agronomists, administration, or investment in infrastructure. Momentum matters, and the ‘25/26 harvest was a slog.
Yet through it all, we emerged with new relationships across Puebla and Oaxaca. In the wake of last year’s uncertainty, the simplicity of the Good Coffee Program carries additional legitimacy and appeal. As a result, participation is up. Way up. Each community that participated last year has more than tripled—or even quintupled—their participation going into this year.
498 producers from across 86 communities with a mean lot size of 100 KGs (in parchment; ~ 1 bag of export grade green). The rest of this update will talk a bit more about these groups. But for process-sake, each sample came with names and numbers, altitudes, varietals, drying and fermentation methods to enable more useful feedback. Each one took multiple visits to the community, meters of messages through WhatsApp groups, and intensive time in the lab. Each producer got personalized notes on drying, on processing, and an objective third-party detailed analysis (physical and sensorial) of their coffees, in order to bring them into the evaluation process.
It should be noted somewhere, so why not here, that this approach is aimed at building trust, but it also requires a significant leap of faith for farmers who opt in. They must defer cash-in-hand offered by local buyers and submit their coffees to an invisible analysis involving cupping forms, UV lights and water activity. Once they receive an offer, they must then organize their own transport to get the coffee to the mill and then wait a few days more for arrival samples to be analyzed and converted into a final offer. Then they must organize on how to receive electronic payments and distribute them proportionally within the community.
It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well—with plenty of friends made along the way.
The pine-filled mountain ridge that spans Sierra Sur traps moisture from the Pacific, feeding some of the most productive farms in Oaxaca. These were once large fincas—estates owned by elites in Veracruz or the capital. During the Mexican Revolution these were abandoned and largely taken over by those who worked there, who then formed a string of self-sufficient communities sprawling east to west on the pacific side of the ridge.
San Sebastian Coatlanes is one of these communities. While over 70% of their income comes from coffee, they only have one buyer in the area, offering a single price for one quality of coffee. When they heard about the Good Coffee Program last year, Brothers David and Lino Jiménez held back coffee from their farms, and those of their fathers, to participate. Pleased with the outcome, they invited others in their community to come. This year GCP received 47 offers from the community, of which 34 were approved and will make their way to export for the first time. They know how to produce for quality; they call it the ‘old ways’, and it involves fermentation using seasoned wooden boxes. They are excited to have a reason to bring these ways back, and into the future.
A string of small towns further south off the Pluma de Hidalgo range from Coatlanes, Ozolotepec is a well-known region for quality Oaxacan coffees. This is where Starbucks put down their flag—before pulling out in the early 2000s when la roya took out 60 – 90% of the region’s production. The farmers never left, however, and have reconstituted themselves as a leading destination for local roasters and international buyers. Coffee here moves quickly: samples are sent out to multiple buyers at a time, giving the communities more options but less time to make decisions. The Good Coffee Program is set up for quick feedback, but still must compete with local mills and roasters who come with cash-in-hand (versus upon delivery to the mill). Still, the prospect of exporting directly, of forming more direct relationships with international roasters, was enough to entice 22 producers to participate this year. Of these, only 4 were able to hold on to their coffee long enough to export through GCP, but their experience was positive enough that much broader participation is expected in the years to come. So while this year’s import is small, it’s a strong start in a strong coffee community who we will see more of in the years to come.
The Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca is extreme. Extreme terrain with extreme profiles and extreme qualities—and getting them is extremely competitive and extremely political. Mixteca is where specialty buyers find the most sophisticated producers; the most Geshas and naturals, farmers who know their crop as a craft. Yet yields remain extremely small, and get gobbled up at good prices by local roasters, auctions and international buyers.
Last year a group of 8 families led by Don Cecilio Pérez Vásquez joined GCP, exporting a handful of bags, and had a positive experience. This year the same group came with 19 members. This level of interest threatened other buyers, who intervened with an ultimatum: the group could either sell to them—only—or though GCP, but not both. Working groups like this are not set up to manage this kind of vote centrally, so they essentially dissolved, allowing members to vote individually, with 10 of the 18 reforming under a new leader to participate in GCP and other opportunities as they arise.
An ejido located in Sierra Norte, the northeast part of Oaxaca. This is the first and only group we’ve ever represented from this area, though we’ve long wanted to work there. In 2025 Adrian Yescas heard about GCP and reached out to our partners at Denso who came up for a visit and to explain the program. It was a heartfelt meeting—this community’s challenges resonated with us, as did their work ethic and earnestness, so they received a little extra attention in the form of a field lab set-up, Kaffelogic and all.
Last season we were able to represent a small lot from Adrian and his wife. This year we received coffees from 33 families, of which 13 got approved and will make their way to export. The remaining 20 received detailed feedback and are already investing in the future of their fincas.
Rugged and remote, with excellent flavor profiles but horrendous yields and 50% outturns. In this context coyotes dominate with cooperatives acting as buyers of last resort. Still—a smattering of community coffee groups in the Huautla region are partnering with GCP to pioneer a third option. This is made possible by the energetic leadership of Hugo, a technical advisor who has gone above and beyond his job to organize collections, send samples and lead trainings (social, commercial, and technical). Hugo has been working between these coffee communities for more than 10 years, and this year got recognized as the director of a new cooperative that integrates these fields schools.
Notably, many of the communities participating in this program are also members of the Red 5 de Diciembre agronomical group from whom C2C has been purchasing for years. Since this group is organized through a cooperative (Reflejo is the name), they have historically had a hard time mobilizing microlots. Through the efforts of Hugo, however, special processes were able to get a more considered evaluation through GCP, allowing them to sell both top lots of naturals and honeys in addition to washed.
Volumes are small, qualities are variable and the timing is adequate—not extraordinary. But the momentum is palpable. Originally introduced to GCP under the USAID Surges program in 2025, these groups have organized themselves, rising to the occasion, and will be around for years to come.
Our longest standing active partner in Oaxaca is Red 5 de Diciembre, a network of top farmers who sign-up to receive training and whose coffees are then kept separate (at our request) through the cooperative. Scores are reliably in the 85+ category, but never include special processes or auction-quality coffees. Within a cooperative context it is difficult to offer different prices for different qualities—it’s just not how these egalitarian-minded groups work. It’s also a lot of risk for them to back up their quality assessments with the high prices needed to secure these kinds of coffees.
Last year we were able to work with Rabobank to extend the GCP purchasing through the Reflejo mill, essentially building a separate supply-chain aimed at these granular separations. The result, again, is more participation—farmers who delivered their washed coffees through the Red 5 network now also submit their special processes through GCP.
As of now the Red 5 network is limited to the La Cañada region; qualities from other areas just have not competed. But the structure is in place to invite more communities to join—the confidence they have in the cooperative, plus the attention / prices they get through GCP is a winning combination.
Crop to Cup has long worked with the La Tribu cooperative as our primary supplier in Chiapas. It’s a very different context than can be found in Oaxaca, Puebla or Veracruz. To start, almost all farmers are members of rather strong cooperatives. These cooperatives are volume-oriented; a majority of certified Mexican coffee come from here. Local membership associations bring coffee to a regional warehouse where daily deliveries are bulked and cupped in chunks of 40-50 bags and separated by quality. Cash flow is king here, so coffees don’t remain in storage for long—within a week coffees are expected to go to mill, and then to export as soon as possible. Incentivizing intentional separations is difficult—mainly because it takes some time to cup coffees and determine if they can command a specialty premium. Our solution this year comes from Denso’s lab services, having calibrated with the cooperative’s cupping team to get filtered offers sent to them for rapid feedback out of Veracruz. Crop to Cup put trust in this relationship to isolate and hold approved lots long enough for samples to be sent to our NY lab, where lots were cupped and blended into export-level volumes.
FECJEM is a new relationship for Crop to Cup, though they are anything but new. This consortium was born in 2013, fathered by the farmer-agronomist, father-son team of Edgar Guildardo Flores Miguel (father) and Cesar Flores Ordoñez (son). Since their inception, the group has grown to represent over 10,000 farmers across 23 cooperatives in Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca. Their sophistication in operations, administration, and the cupping lab position them as an excellent export partner. After this year’s success the plan is to engage them and their members in the Good Coffee Program, expanding our reach into the microlots of Chiapas and Guerrero.
Last, but certainly not least, we need to mention our primary partner in Mexico: Denso Coffee. As co-founders of the Good Coffee Program, their role is neither producers nor exporters. The partnership between Israel Paz and Joz Cortes is personal, professional, and particularly effective. While they both roast and cup and spend time on the farm, Israel primarily handles farmer outreach while Joz manages the lab. Israel received recognition this year as he was selected as a national judge for the Cup of Excellence competition. Joz received recognition this year from the family of farmers and cuppers who have trained with her. The approach is inclusive and supportive; they are positioned as program facilitators, not buyers, allowing them to work alongside farmers who are producing for specialty. Together they make a formidable team, administer the Good Coffee Program (of which they are founding members), and form the backbone of Crop to Cup’s work in Mexico.
As program participation keeps increase, so does the degree of difficulty for Denso. Though certainly a “good” problem, the sheer volume of samples approached an overwhelming level this season, exacerbated by the inevitability of these samples arriving in tightly clustered windows. They’re thankfully equipped with two Kaffelogic sample roasters, but the bulk of time goes toward hulling parchment, green grading, and taking physical specs (moisture, water activity, density). From there, Whatsapp groups for each community have helped keep things organized, allowing us to chime in for communications around feedback, delivery, and payment, letting Denso retain its bandwidth for the lab.
Buying coffee in pergamino by the pillow-sack at the individual smallholder level… takes time. After each season we are left a little exhausted, but hey—that’s what the coffee is for. Once arrivals get into production we are reinvigorated, and take the lessons learned into an optimistic outlook for what is to come.
The 2025/26 season was supposed to be quicker, faster, leaner, bigger. Communities who had participated in years past were now organized and motivated; ready to rock. Lenders and mills were at the ready, and our coop partners received the support needed to expand their own support for specialty production within their membership. We had aimed at exporting a minimum of 6 containers from March to May. We will indeed get 7-8 containers this year, but with exports in June and July. There is no singular reason for one big delay, but rather many reasons for many small delays. A truck breaks down on its way to the mill, forcing farmers to sleep with their coffee overnight to protect it. An invoice has a typo on the farmer’s third middle name, and needs correcting before payment can be issued (and the coffee can be milled). 30KG nano-lots got bulked on their way to the mill, requiring a massive reconciliation. Rains pushed back the harvest, or delayed drying, or closed down the roads to the communities. Pick your poison—we’ve likely imbibed a sip or two.
But one of our beliefs at Crop to Cup is that coffee is liquid effort… and in that sense, this year’s harvest will be thick and sweet.
All questions about Kenyan coffee are loaded questions.
That is not an indictment. It is simply the truth about a place many coffee people—especially alumni of the early specialty generation—once held dearly, and from which many have since distanced themselves, or felt distanced. These days, there is often more talk about what Kenyan coffee used to be, and why it is not that anymore, than about what Kenya is and can be.
That discourse is earned. The work behind it is strong and necessary. But it leaves us with the harder questions: what now, and what next?
Well, despite a complicated season, our answers to both of those questions are very hopeful.
This piece is an attempt to explain why. We’ll start with the work already underway in the West and through the direct export channel, especially with the growing West of Rift Coffee Caucus, led by Stephen Nendela of Muinami Estate, with deep inspiration from Doris Tuiyott of Little Swamps. From there, we’ll walk through our February visit, the pop-up lab built in Eldoret, the coffees we tasted, the scarcity that will characterize this year’s Offer sheet, and why we feel so strongly that the West is still the path worth pursuing.
Stephen Nendela came into our lives in Boston with a backpack full of coffee samples.
The meeting sounds madder than it was—this was SCA Expo, 2022. Still, there was plenty of chance involved. Stephen handed his samples to Dan, our Operations Director and the person on our team who has spent the most time in Kenya, dating back to undergraduate study abroad and post-grad work in Nairobi and the West. Stephen was looking for buyers as direct export possibilities began to open up, and we were looking for a way into earnest, longstanding relationships that Kenya’s factory-and-export system had historically made difficult to sustain.
One thing led to another: we cupped the coffees, liked them, felt the potential, and the interest was mutual. In the years since, the relationship has deepened and widened. We have come to know and trust Stephen exceedingly well: his thoroughness, his dedication to improvement, his tack-sharp wit, and his almost dogged insistence on keeping everyone laughing regardless of the circumstance.
Meanwhile, with help from Habil Olaka of Yellow Diamonds, Stephen helped form the free-to-join Trans-Nzoia Coffee Farmer’s Caucus, now the West of Rift Coffee Caucus, as a way to pool knowledge and resources around the direct export pathway. Every season, the number of quality-oriented farmers has grown, and so has our network of partners.
When you are west of the Rift Valley—or, as the Caucus has abridged it for maximum effect, West of Rift—you are on a high plateau. Many of the farms we’re working with sit above 2,000 meters, but the experience is nothing like the life-flashing-before-eyes climbs we know from places like Peru. There are no buses creaking through the clouds, no hideaways tucked into terrifying slopes.
These details go beyond convenience. The landscape makes spacing, intercropping, equipment storage, and day-to-day labor among the trees much easier. We are not seeing Brazil-style machine harvesting, but the terrain itself does not render the idea absurd.
These conditions also help explain why so many farmers here are open to coffee. After decades of disappointing returns from wheat and maize, coffee’s budding success in Trans-Nzoia County is a welcome sight. Doris Tuiyott of Little Swamps is one of the clearest proofs that it is not a mirage.
Little Swamps maintains an open-door policy for knowledge sharing, with Doris’s management duo, Philemon and Gideon, working alongside a group of mostly women neighbors who handle much of the farm’s perennial work. Doris’s plans are abundant, but she seemed especially excited by the idea of becoming a local nexus for learning: a new on-site building for more classroom-friendly training, plus a seed distribution network to scale up the work already happening in her nursery.
Citing Doris as proof of coffee’s appeal may be cheating, since she is almost certainly the most inspiringly accomplished and generous person in the bunch. By the time we made it to her Eldoret home for dinner, most of the guests were either newly harvesting what they had planted at her urging, or were adamant that they intended to start.
Without a doubt, that dinner was the emotional highlight of the trip. After a beautiful meal, with the ice already broken, Doris went around the room and asked everyone: what are you doing with your life?
From most people, this would be yet another loaded question. From Doris, it was plainly curiosity and care. The answers ranged widely across age, education, and past professional experience, but coffee was the obvious motif. Right there, in that room, coffee felt like a very real, very worthwhile focus, with serious momentum behind it.
Among we travelers from farthest away, it was Dan’s answer to Doris’s question that was the most pointed: trying to be useful.
That was, after all, our reason for being there. To be useful actors in this supply chain, and to advance the progress that started in the West when Dan first met Stephen in Boston.
Our core goal this season was to bring quality assessment as close to production as possible. A tighter feedback loop means faster, clearer decisions, and eventually a smoother process for getting coffees out of the country. To do that, we had to build a temporary lab, because for now, no comparable specialty lab exists in West Kenya.
Thanks to Stephen and Ragai Evans—another new-to-coffee farmer and the de facto second-in-command of the Caucus—much of the work was already underway when we arrived. They had rented a roasting and cupping space beside a grocery store, built custom cupping tables, brought Stephen’s Kaffelogic to join the two we carried from New York, and enlisted a serious crew to help push a mountain of samples through an imperfect but operational system over roughly three days.
There is a wonderfully boring alternate version of this story: lab ready, samples ready, coffees evaluated.
But alas, we arrived in Eldoret to find issues with the distilled water, a grinder that had traveled from Hong Kong to Vietnam to New York to Nairobi to Eldoret and—at some point along the way—lost its functionality, and the most damning discovery of all: the mill had not yet furnished the samples.
Still, the crew found a way. We tested and aligned around usable cupping water. A loaner grinder was tracked down in Nairobi and shuttled overnight to Eldoret by an old friend. The mill was hounded until samples began streaming in by evening. Meanwhile, the Kaffelogics were calibrated to the environment, so that once the physical analysis line was moving, we could begin roasting in earnest.
By the morning of the third day, we were ready to cup the roughly 150 mill outturns that had made it through the pipeline.
In the field, some motifs repeat: level topography, brick-red soil, Macadamia and Grevillea for shade, the gangly Christmas-tree silhouettes of Batian, and the stout bushy orbs of Ruiru 11.
Across the cupping tables, the range is harder to compress. Many of these lots do not scream Kenya in the familiar Central Highlands register of tree tomato and black currant. We are still getting to know the signatures of West Kenya, both sensorially and clinically, with an agronomist slated to join the Caucus’s orbit next season.
What we can say is that quality was humblingly impressive, especially after the harvest calibration cuppings we had done in Nairobi to understand the broader auction lot landscape before heading to Eldoret.
The highest-scoring lots showed honeyed sweetness, ripe stone fruits, and hints of Ethiopia-esque florals, including coffees from Little Swamps and Muinami, as well as from newer names like Wilson Chumo (pictured above) and Joseph Kolombos. Herbaceousness is still part of the picture, but anyone looking for a simple variation on the Central Kenya SL theme should open their heart a little wider here.
Speaking of SLs: many producers in the Caucus have begun planting SL28 in the last few years, after initially favoring hardier Batian and Ruiru varieties. This season, Big Tree Estate was the first to yield enough SL28 for a dedicated microlot, and the results were stellar.
That does not mean SL28 will erase the sensory distinction between regions, but it is a promising step toward raising the quality ceiling and bringing a bit more familiarity into some of the resulting lots.
The pop-up lab delivered high highs. The best samples were electric. The sense of accomplishment was strong. The growing community of farmers remains humbling to embrace.
The outturn volumes, however, are reluctantly sobering this time around.
As lot construction advanced in the following weeks, the simple fact of scarcity—even more than anticipated in a known low-output year—put a hard ceiling on the season. In blunt terms, there will be virtually no spot coffee from the West this year.
This supply reduction was visible across much of Kenya’s specialty-producing landscape, stretching east to the Central Highlands, though the country’s complicated grading system makes any blanket “lower output” statement imprecise. In the West specifically, reduced output was exacerbated by widespread reliance on Batian, a variety known to suffer boom/bust cycles if careful management and staggered planting aren’t already entrenched.
There is reason to believe the supply picture can improve next year. The Batian cycle should see-saw back upward. Younger plantings will continue maturing. Increased agronomic support should help. Most of all, we have a growing number of total contributors, and a growing share of returning contributors pushing more of their output into the specialty sphere.
Next harvest still may seem far away, but from here, we feel good about it.
The other major opportunity for improvement is tempo.
The direct export process—already new, clunky, and mired in regulatory speedbumps—was further complicated this season by new Nairobi Coffee Exchange trading rules, Direct Settlement System payment reforms, revised fee structures, and the broader Coffee Act overhaul shifting sector oversight from the Agriculture and Food Authority to a reconstituted Coffee Board of Kenya. Even with so many key moves made early, the group found itself encountering and solving for many speedbumps along the way.
Next year, we expect a more settled version of this pathway will be easier to navigate for partners from farm through export. In recent conversations, Stephen has also affirmed his interest in tightening Caucus control over warehousing and milling, at least incrementally. Some slack is, however, owed to this past season’s mill, which had never before dealt with clients sprinting for specialty standards. Depending on future volumes, the Caucus may eventually justify investing in its own mill, though next season is likely too soon.
To really understand what is happening in the West, it helps to briefly return to the alternative pathway.
Historically, that has meant working through the auction-oriented exporter network that still defines much of Kenya’s specialty coffee identity. That pathway is not without value. Visiting exporter labs in Nairobi remains one of the best ways to understand the harvest, and to gain exposure to some of the highest-scoring lots of the season. It also helps us fill pre-harvest requests that the West cannot yet accommodate.
But the auction is a system of discovering quality, not cultivating it.
The 2023 reform package unbundled the old vertically integrated exporter model without fully replacing its farmer-facing functions. Historically, the system was opaque and self-interested. But within that opacity, exporter-linked marketing agents still had reason to court farmers and co-ops directly. They needed coffee flowing into their milling, marketing, financing, and export pipelines.
That could mean pre-crop financing, input support, certification help, extension work, and other services designed as much to secure supply as to improve it.
The reforms were meant to address real conflicts of interest by separating roles across the value chain and routing payments more directly to farmers. Those are good aims, but in the process, exporter incentive to provide farmer-facing support has thinned. That is our core conflict with the status quo, and our motivation to keep building outside it.
All of the above is why we believe in the West, and why “winning” still feels like the right word, even if an imperfect one.
This is a place with momentum: curious farmers who are increasingly well-organized, land that can support meaningful growth, young trees approaching fuller production, and quality expectations clarifying every season. Just as importantly, it is all happening within a direct export framework that keeps the conversation attached to the people producing the coffee.
Questions about Kenyan coffee remain loaded, but there is no need to pad the answers with filler.
This season was a major step toward moving the theory of this model into action. The final export volume will be limited, but the work behind it is not. Our partners should be proud of what is happening now. We are excited about what comes next.
What Kenyan coffee used to be may be what hooked many of us in the first place, but what it can be is what has us paying attention now.
Well friends, here we are, in the month of March, and look at this—our first container from Ethiopia has landed! In a year that has been… volatile, to say the least… it does feel pretty darn good to see at least one logistical victory, and we are not above celebrating it.
Needless to say, this timing was far from luck. Mustefa Abakeno, whose coffees fill this very first box to its proud brim (if you’ll indulge the anthropomorphization of a shipping container), is a longtime partner and one of many producers in Ethiopia who have rightly won fame for their name, and he’ll be the first recipient of the credit to be doled out. From there, even acknowledging the benefits of scale, getting his coffee to the US before April is the result of a sustained, several-month effort to move decisions closer to the point of production and to empower the Co Qua crew in Addis itself. Since October, we’ve kept a steady roll of North American team members in and out of the country (altogether half a dozen of us made it out there in some context or another), supporting the fully built-out team on the ground. In addition to Moata and Asnake, this includes the addition of Tensay Melkie in the lab, tightening feedback loops and helping ensure that approvals, sample flow, and logistics could move in parallel with the harvest rather than waiting their turn in its wake.
Back in January, we framed our approach to this season not exactly as an attempt to move faster, but, more importantly—sooner. To sequence decisions in a way that would allow coffees to exit before the familiar late-spring bottlenecks take hold, and this container (as well as two more hot on its heels) is a direct outcome of that approach.
*There is, however, an immediate caveat: these coffees are entirely sold. As many already know, that’s not a quirk, but in fact a prerequisite for this sort of finesse amidst omnipresent urgency. Committing early, very early, and sustaining engagement from [roasting company] buyers to traders to sourcing is imperative for early season action to result in proportionally early resolution. Of course, even with this level of pre-commitment, such speed is not possible when up against the logistical challenges of smaller scale producers, smaller lots, and all of the ensuing fragmentation that that puts into the box.
But still! Even for those of you reading this without any claimed coffees on this container, there’s reason for excitement, as a couple more of our early bird departures are slated to arrive in just a few more weeks. We’ll talk more about those a little later on, but for now, it’s worth rewinding and reviewing the season so far.
From the outset, this harvest grappled with an exceptionally tricky push/pull of economic pressures. Cherry prices opened at historically high levels—roughly double where they sat at comparable moments in the prior cycle—placing immediate strain on washing stations and exporters, all of whom operate as cherry buyers themselves. That alone was enough to slow collection in many places, but this situation became more complex as the season progressed.
With the C softening meaningfully during the middle of the harvest, a disconnect emerged between producer expectations—anchored to early-season pricing—and the realities of the market by the time coffees were ready (and expected) to move. This resulted in a sort of quiet (and occasionally not so quiet) stalemate: more conservative producers reduced output while maintaining quality, while others delayed sales in the hope that demand would close the gap.
On our side, this forced some reluctant tightrope walking. Across many groups, availability was uncertain not just in volume, but in timing, meaning commitments required more conviction, while at the same time the cost of being wrong—on price, on quality, on logistics—was even higher than in recent years.
All of this, of course, was before the United States started a war in Iran.
Snapping to the present tense, it is fair to say that things are volatile. In fact, I am aware that I’ve already said so—it’s one of the first things I find myself writing in almost every dispatch I’m putting out these days. But as for how this affects our work in Ethiopia, it bears repeating.
Outbound shipments from East Africa are among the most exposed segments of any coffee importer’s supply chain, as most routings pass through the Middle East—either directly or indirectly via the repositioning of empty containers. With the escalation of conflict in the region, that system has become substantially less reliable over the past month or so.
Like most of our peers, we typically work with Maersk, MSC, or CMA CGM for transit out of East Africa. Under normal conditions, each offers a relatively predictable lane: Maersk via Oman, MSC via Saudi Arabia, and CMA CGM via India and the Red Sea. At present, each comes with significant limitations.
Maersk, while still offering the most consistent scheduling, is facing a shortage of containers. CMA CGM has equipment available but is cancelling or “rolling” departures at a high rate. MSC—currently the only major carrier still transiting the Red Sea—is accepting bookings, but does not provide routing details until very late in the process, making forward planning extremely difficult. That, too, feels increasingly tenuous as conditions evolve.
The net effect is straightforward: fewer options, less certainty, longer transit times, and rising costs, both outright and in terms of financing as inventory remains in motion for longer periods. All of this compounds a structure that we’ve discussed before: in Ethiopia, timelines are not evenly chunked across the year. Coffees that miss the early export window—generally by April—do not simply ship that much later, they instead become disproportionately exposed to severe delay as container availability tightens and backlogs thicken. What might begin as a minor lag can quickly become a multi-month issue, hence the spread of Ethiopian arrivals from—in this case—March through… September? And in a year where both producers and buyers understandably moved more cautiously, those delays have, in some cases, been amplified even more.
Altogether, these dynamics have made for a notably tight import cycle, requiring breakneck hustle from everyone involved despite softer optics to show for it than in other places and seasons.
To start, our approach this year was intentionally conservative. Fun? Not the most, but hopefully with merit: leaning toward coffees that were fully prepared, more easily verifiable at the point of approval, and more logistically executable were our means of reducing exposure to downstream surprises, despite yielding a more limited spot position than we’re used to.
At the same time, producer-side hesitation slowed the overall pace of the harvest, compressing the window in which coffees could be purchased, approved, and exported in time to avoid bottlenecks, cumulatively resulting in what we see now: early arrivals arriving early, but with most of their volume already committed, and late arrivals arriving… well, you get the picture.
So for roasters, the implications are not especially complicated, but it is worth stating clearly: nowadays, planning pays far greater dividends more than opportunism. This has always been true, to varying degrees, but never so viscerally as now. The coffees that arrive early—and with the most favorable logistics and pricing structures—are going to be those that were discussed, aligned on, and booked earlier in the cycle (translation—ahead of it).
This reality also complements how our pricing model functions. The farther out a coffee is booked, the less risk we carry into that transaction, and the less risk mitigation needs to be baked into pricing. Amidst rampant volatility (hopefully no one has started a drinking game based around this word) both in-market and in-transit, this dynamic is even more pronounced.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that smaller or more flexible buying strategies are untenable, it merely means that the invest/return cycle is stretched, and the opportunities for acceleration are fewer and farther between.
While the first two containers are fully sold, they are not the only ones that made it out of Ethiopia ahead of the major movement milestone we’re now brushing up against.
The initial arrivals are anchored by western washed coffees, and that’s worth noting for those who would like to elbow ahead of their peers in future seasons: first Ethiopians to land are almost always going to be western washed lots, and they fortunately represent some of the best value as well. As mentioned earlier, two of the earliest lots this year come from Mustefa Abakeno, whose coffees continue to set a high bar.
Close behind, we have additional western offerings likely landing in late April/early May, with the last of the early bird departures stretching into June. These include coffees from newer partners like Abduarezak Mohamadami, a young producer in his second year working with us, thoroughly manifesting the hustle mentality, as well as lots connected to Habtamu Fikadu’s expanding footprint in the West. These coffees offer the most immediate opportunities in the current position—fresh, well-structured washed lots with strong value alignment. Not a ton remains available at time of writing, but enough that sparking some buzz is definitely worthwhile.
Further out, the broader cast of well-known producers from both the Bensa and Yirgacheffe will begin to arrive on more typical (if less desirable) timelines, stretching into midsummer and beyond. From Bensa, Bekele Kachara, Bekele Belacho, Nguisse Nare, and Bekele Yutute round out familiar names (with most of their coffees, unsurprisingly, also claimed by this point). Mengeshe Gumi, Yohanis Dogoma, Habtamu Fikadu and Gemedech Fulsa from Yirgacheffe are also on the way, as are Mustefa Abakeno, Tuke Yute, Musa Abalulesa, and Reshad Ababulgu from Agaro. At time of writing, there is still enough availability from Mengeshe, Yohanis, Reshad, Tuke, Habtamu and Mustefa to warrant an email to your trader.
As always, southern naturals and small producer lots will land latest, likely August and September, assuming shipping constraints/global conflict don’t continue ratcheting up—not necessarily a prudent assumption, but the best we can offer without resorting to sky-falling sentiments that do us no good at the moment.
Despite the myriad pressures of the season, quality has held at a high level across the board.
If there is an overarching shift worth noting, it is a relative rebalancing among processing styles. Naturals, which in recent years have occasionally felt secondary to more experimental approaches, showed particularly well this season—often carrying a liveliness and positive ferment character that blurred the line with the ascendant-in-popularity controlled anaerobic profiles. By contrast, some anaerobic lots felt a bit too lacking restraint, with a wider variance in cup expression, despite there still being plenty of winners making it through the offer stage.
Honey-processed coffees—particularly out of the Bensa group—were among the most recurrent team favorites, striking that quasi-mythical balance between fruit vibrancy and structural clarity that felt both intentional and fun. This builds on a trend we noted last year, where low-water, demucilaged processes began to emerge as a practical and high-performing compromise between logistical limitations and the prevailing desire for washed coffees in the broader market.
As ever, these are generalizations across a wide and varied landscape, but they offer a useful lens as the offer sheet continues to clarify and as we think ahead (we simply can’t help ourselves) to what we’ll prioritize next season.
There is no particularly clean way to summarize a season like this.
What’s gone right this season is genuinely encouraging: earlier shipments, strong quality, and a level of coordination across teams that continues to improve year over year. At the same time, the broader context—economic, logistical, and geopolitical—is as unsettled as ever, and will continue to shape how the remainder of the year unfolds, from Ethiopia to everywhere else. It is perhaps misleading, in March, upon the first box’s arrival, to conceptualize this as a “review” rather than an “update,” considering we fully anticipate we’ll be hawking ICO #’s deep into the summertime (which one could soberingly point out is farther in the future than the start of harvest is in the past… but hopefully nobody on our Ethiopia sourcing team is thinking of it that way) before we can, in earnest, call Ethiopia 25/26 a wrap.
And yet—this is by no means a bad place to be. Coffee is here, more coffee is on the water and in preparation, even if many will arrive on a slower proportional cadence than the first. As always, we’ll continue to share updates as timelines firm up, and to work with you directly to navigate what is available, when, and under what conditions.
In the meantime, if Ethiopia is a meaningful part of your menu this year, the most useful step is the same it ever was: be in touch.
Introduction
With final offers clarifying and consolidated export approaching, we are in a good position to reflect on a successful second year in Vietnam. In this piece, put together by our sourcing lead, Erinn Buyhoff, we’re reviewing the state of our work in Vietnam, clarifying our goals for the present and near-future, and checking in with each of the supply partners who will be represented among our forthcoming imports this spring. These reflections come after a ~2.5 week visit to the country, meeting with each of the partners detailed below for logistical, qualitative, and overall relational check-ins that we’re happy to say have left a lingering enthused impression even after the dust has settled back home.
Following the success of our first Vietnam import during the 24/25 harvest season, we are entering our second year with a focus on momentum and growth. With demand slowly but steadily increasing, our goals this season are to expand our network to accommodate customer interest based on feedback from last season, further develop and solidify the relationships we initiated last year, and continue building our role as envoys of the two-way coffee cultural exchange between the Vietnamese and American roaster/retailer markets.
Quality and processing improvements this year position specialty Vietnamese coffee to continue making real waves in the U.S. market, and we are poised to be a vanguard in this space. This harvest cycle, in particular, represents a measurable step forward in baseline quality. Despite severe and, in some regions, catastrophic rainfall during cherry maturation, the net effect for the coffees that remained was delayed and more even ripening. Early picking was discouraged, allowing most cherries to reach fuller maturity before harvest. This was followed by an abrupt transition into a cool, dry production season—ideal for controlled drying and stabilization. The result across nearly every partner we visited was improved ripeness consistency and cleaner drying execution than we have yet experienced in Vietnam.
Logistically speaking, last year we workshopped the framework of an efficient export model, bringing a few small Vietnamese producer groups into direct contact with the U.S. market for the first time. This year we are building that framework into a collaborative network of trusted partners in order to confidently grow volume and offset higher market prices with efficient and scalable logistics solutions.
It is also worth noting that Vietnam remains one of the most competitive coffee environments globally, where year-to-year loyalty is rare and buyers willing to prepay often dominate. Against this backdrop, the willingness of our partners to continue prioritizing working with us—despite alternative market pressures—signals that something more durable is coming to fruition, which is perhaps the most gratifying aspect of this whole process so far.
During last year’s trip, most inquiries were marked by a stern warning from the Vietnamese coffee community: “Competition is tough, and loyalty is hard to come by.” Returning to the country this year, we were thankful to see that we had evaded this foreboding, met instead by partners excited to work with us again, and in some cases going out of their way to do so. New potential partners were also easy to come by, with many unsolicited samples and meetings falling taking place organically.
With ongoing volatility in the coffee market and specialty Arabica being the primary segment affected, Robusta continues to prove itself as an anchor for meaningful volume from Vietnam. As we grow our Robusta program, our support of Vietnamese Arabica will follow and help elevate the broader industry through continued quality development.
The feedback given to our producer partners last year was taken seriously. This year they returned with samples and milling outturns that often exceeded our own expectations. This progress has been accompanied by interest in developing their own quality labs to continue pushing the quality ceiling higher in Vietnam.
Though anecdotal, some consistent structural bottlenecks across labs were the prevalence of extremely soft bottled water for cupping, combined with high-elevation boiling constraints, and limited access to full five-cup SCA evaluation setups. Rather than imposing rigid replication of lab standards we are more accustomed to, our approach focused on adaptive standardization: identifying which variables must remain fixed (extraction intent, calibration logic, evaluation language) and which can flex (grind size compensation, roast development adjustments, cupware material) in order to produce operable and repeatable results.
Fundamentally, we believe that the biggest obstacle to skyrocketing enthusiasm for Vietnamese coffee is a simple mismatch in understanding. Unsurprisingly, no one understands Vietnamese coffee better than the Vietnamese producers and roasters who work with it daily. The U.S. market has much to learn from them, and we hope to continue connecting these two markets to the benefit of all involved. Facilitating information exchange (Robusta roast profiles, blend pairings, etc.) and quality feedback (physical and sensorial evaluation data) will support stronger demand and greater producer empowerment. A little later this year, we are planning to invest some real energy into spotlighting how to bring the best out of Robusta in both roasting and brewing contexts—stay tuned for that.
This past year has been one of significant change for Great Cherry, with a reorientation toward specialization in specific areas. After restructuring its previous milling partnership, Great Cherry is refocusing its model on logistics solutions and value-added actions through lot separation, milling, and the creation of quality tiers within its Robusta exports.
Will and Tami, the duo at the helm of the project, have presented several options this year, organized into tiers:
While much of Vietnam’s emerging “fine Robusta” movement centers on fermentation novelty and experimental co-ferments, Great Cherry’s core advancement is more foundational. The primary quality lift comes from disciplined ripeness selection, color sorting, and structured lot tiering that generates measurable improvements before the bulk of the processing is even underway. This distinction creates premium pathways at the level of cherry selection and sorting, allowing more value to flow toward smallholders rather than concentrating solely at the processing stage.
Higher cherry prices this year, driven by the supply-restricting cataclysmic flooding in the South-Central Highlands, pushed regional pricing upward. Nonetheless, Will was able to successfully hedge his position to approach near-parity with initial pricing expectations, identifying even more cost-effective options in the process. As mentioned in the introduction, heavy rains discouraged early picking and improved ripeness consistency across the board, followed by a cool, dry production season allowing coffees to dry and stabilize extremely well, cumulatively resulting in improved consistency and quality—much deserved victories for communities reeling from the acute devastation of the rains.
Finally, Great Cherry’s pivot toward logistics has positioned them as our primary consolidation and export partner this year, proving themselves efficient, communicative, and reliable. To support their growth and strengthen their role as our most trusted export partner, their lab is now equipped with a Kaffelogic unit, and their evaluation lab is now in earnest development. There is truly tremendous potential for Great Cherry to become the trusted Robusta quality evaluation lab in Vietnam, further increasing the efficacy of our continued work together.
Zanya has returned this year with impressive results. Marian has expanded his network to more than 30 families in his area, processing and finding markets for all who bring cherry to sell. His project to install mechanical dryers for more cost-effective specialty Arabica processing remains underway and looks promising for next year.
Last year’s drying challenges due to the late rainy season were not an issue this year, as has already been detailed, with a range of processing styles being the beneficiaries of the cool, dry weather that followed the rains. Although prices are higher due to elevated cherry costs, quality improvements justify the increase.
Marian’s double washed Arabica, in particular, stands out as the structural backbone of our Arabica program this season: intensely sweet, clean, and consistent in the mid-85 to 86 range, with a profile anchored in chocolate, caramelized sugars, and restrained fruit. While experimental lots generate interest, it is this disciplined and repeatable execution that offers scalable opportunity and real footholds into roasters’ menus.
Second, pre-financing and early commitments matter—but only when paired with clear procedures. Another hallmark of
Lots of interest from Zanya include:
During this trip, we calibrated equipment in the field while working on sample roast profile development and cupping protocols in the lab. This alignment clarified our intake and evaluation standards and strengthened the weight of our feedback, and will continue paying dividends as we collaborate from a distance.
96B is primarily a Liberica-focused project—though a small portion of our total work in Vietnam, this remains an intriguing point of collaboration and one that we intend to stick with as that season (which comes a bit later) progresses. More update on this supply chain will crystallize in the months ahead.
Loc Rung (Nature’s Gift) has been on our radar, but is the primary new-to-us partner for this coming season. The connection came via Marian at Zanya, who personally purchases high-quality cherry from them. Loc Rung is a small, three-year-old operation quickly gaining recognition in Asian specialty markets.
Their coffees have already reached high-profile specialty buyers in Europe, Korea and Japan. The team is small: production managers Kate and Leo, a core crew of 4–5 mill and greenhouse workers, and a rotating group of local pickers committed to their strict ripe-cherry-only standard. Few operations in Vietnam maintain this discipline, and the impact of this differentiation cannot be overstated: multiple selective picking passes—rather than strip picking once or twice—fundamentally alter the baseline quality before processing even begins. The improvements in sweetness, clarity, and defect reduction are rooted first in cherry discipline, then amplified through fermentation work. Their elevation range (1500–1850 masl) further supports that quality.
While their washed lots are strong, their fermentation work is exceptional. Carbonic Maceration (Washed and Natural) and an in-house aerobic fermentation style called “Ferveo” are standout offerings. This experimentation has attracted Asian roasters seeking collaborative fermentation trials and co-ferments.
Standout lots this year include:
All samples cupped in their lab were impressive and distinct, and we calibrated roast profiles and cupping standards during the visit to better align evaluation protocols.
Loc Rung is actively pushing the quality ceiling in Vietnam, and building this partnership early should prove valuable in reshaping quality perceptions of Vietnamese coffee over the long term.
Altogether—improved ripeness conditions, strengthened partner alignment, advancing lab standardization, and more clearly differentiated Robusta positioning—this harvest represents a pivotal moment for our Vietnam program. Prices have risen, but unlike prior cycles, quality improvements provide a defensible value proposition to match. If there were ever a year to lean confidently into Vietnam with coordinated and focused effort—this is that year, and we’re doing it.
THE BASICS
If you work in the coffee industry, you should be sensitive to large systems acting against the benefit or will of the people they purport to serve. Staying informed, staying vocal, and staying clear about what matters are not the be-all end-all for making positive impact, but they are prerequisites.
With that said, we know that solidarity isn’t enough, but we still want to unambiguously express it: solidarity with everyone appalled and overwhelmed by what ICE is perpetrating right now in the United States—most visibly in Minneapolis—but to varying degrees throughout the country. With our key audience of cafe/roastery owners/managers in mind, we have collected some resources on workplace rights in the event of an interaction with ICE. These may be redundant, but if you have not yet had the conversation with your team, let this be one more bank of resources to kickstart that process.
Today, the 28th of January, is hopefully a pivotal inflection point—certain small signs indicate that the government is responding to the pressure sustained foremost by the people of Minnesota, with aspects of de-escalation easing into motion. It is fair to infer that we may soon see a degree of ICE reallocation to other cities and that at least slightly more attention will be paid to preserving the optics of legal action as audits and encounters nonetheless continue.
MEETING THE MOMENT
For that reason, now feels like a worthwhile opportunity to reorient around some of the basics. Some of this may be redundant, but if you have not yet had the conversation with your team, let this be one more bank of resources to kickstart that process.
Below, we’ve summarized some steps we can all take towards readiness in the one-the-nose acronym ‘SALT’, reminding us to Stay calm, Ask for a warrant, Limit access, and Track & Train — all of which are elaborated upon in a printable format linked a little further down.
We’ve also dedicated some extra energy to how I-9 preparedness can help your business prepare against one of the most common catalysts for ICE encounters at places of work.
We know that these are small steps, and that in dire circumstances legal technicalities can prove useless, but we believe that collective care requires readiness, and if we can make any aspect of that readiness quicker or easier—let’s do it.
I-9’s
For business owners & HR teams:
Not all I-9 audits result in an ICE workplace raid, but nearly all ICE raids start with I-9 audits. They are administratively tedious and boring, but much more common than the higher visibility raids that more often make the news. That’s why we need to know about them.
I-9 audits begin with a Notice of Inspection (NOI) giving business owners three days to provide their I-9 records. If errors or inconsistencies are found, owners are given 10 days to respond with corrections. You can protect your employees by completing I-9s correctly and on time (Section 1 by the first day of work, Section 2 within 3 days of hire). Details matter, since snags or inconsistencies within them are what trigger audits.
It is the employer who decides what information to ask from employees, and they should avoid over-documenting—no need to ask for anything that exceeding the “one List A document, or one List B + one List C document” requirement.
When storing I-9s keep them separate from other HR paperwork.
Also, if possible—avoid using E-Verify for filing, as this has been correlated to a higher chance of audits.
“KNOW YOUR RIGHTS” QUICK SHEETS: LINKED & PRINTABLE
Click the link at the bottom of any image to be taken to a printable PDF with active links
BEYOND THE BASICS
Pages 2 and 3 of the document above contain links to valid, vetted sources that are great jumping off points for learning more or further pursuing any of these concisely conveyed ideas. To close out this post, it’s also worth acknowledging that much of the potential progress hinted at right now is a product of serious, sustained messaging to politicians with voting power. In our experience, the best starting point for knowing where to direct your voice is 5 Calls, a site that allows you to set your location, search for issues that are important to you, and will then provide a comprehensive set of relevant representatives, how to contact them, relevant background information for the issue you’ve identified, and even a “script” to help orient the call/voicemail. Beyond this, entities like the National Immigration Law Center also provide several simple sign-ups and prompts for messages to legislators about issues directly related to immigration and enforcement.
As trying a period as this continues to be, we are also bearing witness to an incredible rallying around what’s right. Both as individuals and organizationally, we will continue doing our best to do more, to stay prepared, and to remain a resource for those of you we are already so proud to collaborate with.
For now—stay informed, stay loud, and stay safe.
Peru Harvest Review + Peek At 2026
With the last containers of the long ‘25 season shaping into final offers from Laguna de los Cóndores, San Fernando, and Huadquiña, wwe’ve made it through the Mobius strip phase of our second full season in Peru, and are feeling quite proud of what’s been accomplished. The sheer growth in volume from one cycle to the next is largely unprecedented for us, but of even more importance are the scope and impact of the work, the portfolio of likely-sustainable partnerships, and the roadmap for years to come.
In this post, we’ll zoom into our relationship with NGO-partner Progreso and outline what they were doing with (almost) every one of our present cooperative partners before we connected with them, as well as detailing what we’ve contributed since making the connection. After that, we’ll review the key lessons we learned from this import cycle, before contextualizing how we intend to apply them to the forthcoming year, and what we’re working on with Progreso for the forthcoming season as well. Finally, we’ll paint a vivid picture of each cooperative named above—each still with coffee heading our way.
Progreso is an Amsterdam-based non-governmental organization that works with coffee and cocoa cooperatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia to provide pre-crop financing alongside administrative, agronomic, and agroforestry support—strengthening cooperative capacity while enabling more resilient, quality-driven production systems. Their model pairs working capital with technical assistance, including agroforestry interventions tailored to altitude and ecology: higher-altitude members gain access to appropriate seedlings and post-harvest equipment, while lower-altitude members receive support for water management and shade optimization.
Our primary point of contact in Peru is Yasmin Córdova Castro, whom we first met at the SCA Expo in Houston in 2024. Having heard about the Great Coffee Program (GCP) work we were doing in Mexico, Progreso was interested in adapting the model to Peru—specifically around pre-contracting specialty coffees and microlots through transparent, cup-score–based pricing. Together, this has allowed us to work within well-supported segments of cooperatives to identify, separate, and develop quality: strengthening community blends while also surfacing higher-scoring microlots that might otherwise be blended away, sold through intermediaries, or diverted to domestic markets or competitions. This year also marks the start of Progreso’s work with El Morito, made possible through our partnership.
When working with a group like Progreso, our goal is to become the market interface and sustainable supply conduit for cooperatives that have received (and will continue receiving) the internal-facing fortifications required in order to render that sustainability mutual. With strong leaders and earnest community collaboration, the farmers themselves are the foundation for everything that comes after, with Progreso stepping in to provide the necessary investment in all of this potential. With these prerequisites, we finally step in to activate that capacity through the nitty gritty work of importing, by:
In addition to Lagunas, San Fernando, and Huadquiña, Progreso had been working with both Aromas del Valle and Rutas del Inca for several years before we came into the picture, and we are enthused to share that El Morito is slated to onboard into their agroforestry program this coming year. In their own ways, each of these cooperatives is a showcase of how this sort of work can be impactful, making our job—while not easy—feel like it is positively poised for the long haul.
The most tangible expression of our first year’s collaboration both with Progreso and these cooperatives has been the way funding, trade, and technical support were braided together rather than treated as parallel efforts. Through built-in contributions tied directly to contracts, Crop to Cup was able to generate nearly $30,000 in additional funds during the 2025 cycle, on top of a direct $10,000 seed contribution, creating a strong working pool of capital dedicated to augmenting Progreso-led programming in the country for the past season.
Crucially, these funds were not abstract or speculative. They were earned through actual commercial execution—contracts signed, coffee shipped, inventory sold—and scaled in proportion to value rather than solely by volume. Smaller, higher-quality lots contributed more per pound, while full-container contracts still contributed meaningfully under tighter pricing conditions. The result was a funding mechanism that rewarded quality and differentiation without excluding scale, remaining viable even through an exceptionally volatile market year.
On Progreso’s side, this coincided with the successful completion of Component I of their Blueprint programming across several partner cooperatives, which focuses on strengthening the use of revolving funds and agroforestry management systems. That work—largely invisible to buyers but foundational to everything that follows—reinforced internal credit committees, improved financial fluency, and expanded shade-based production systems designed to stabilize yields over time while staying firmly within the necessary framework looming on the horizon with the European Union Deforestation Regulations. In parallel, Progreso continued to provide working-capital support to cooperatives, purchasing coffee from members and easing liquidity constraints during peak harvest.
By no means did Crop to Cup swoop in to redefine those programs, but we did foster conditions under which they could be tested. By boosting demand-volume across all groups and maintaining consistent market presence, the real constraints—timing, documentation, sampling cadence, fixation—helped reveal where systems were robust and where they were not. That clarity now directly informs how everyone in the value chain is thinking about the next phase of work.
Several lessons emerged clearly from this past cycle.
First, quality alone is insufficient without coordination. Although of course importers learn this quickly—in any supply chain—the ways in which this reality comes to both fruition and friction are case to case. In multiple instances through this cycle, coffees that met or exceeded sensory expectations upon initial assessment struggled to find immediate placement due to misaligned timing or incomplete offer communication. Conversely, cooperatives with strong internal organization and responsive export teams were able to move larger volumes more efficiently, even at modest quality tiers.
Second, pre-financing and early commitments matter—but only when paired with clear procedures. Another hallmark of specialty importing, but with its own structural nuance from place to place. Locally unproven approaches in Peru, such as pre-financing microlots, showed promise but also exposed the need for tighter shared understanding around approvals, fixation windows, and escalation paths. Especially considered along the spectrum of how we work elsewhere in the world, none of these observations are paradigm-shaking—they are largely lessons learned in various contexts, but reinforced here with Peru’s own operational idiosyncrasies.
Last but not least—we all saw that funding mechanisms tied to transactions create accountability on all sides. Because donations were generated through contracts rather than pledges, every stakeholder—producer, cooperative, importer, roaster—had a clear line of sight between performance and reinvestment. That transparency will remain central going forward.
With those lessons in mind and with the rolling nature of a country covering as vast a latitudinal expanse as Peru, we are in the position now of locking in for the forthcoming harvest even as the final lots from the “previous” one just get onto the water.
Together with Progreso, for 2026 we are planning a more regionally concentrated program centered on post-harvest processing, timed to early harvest windows and designed around hands-on, train-the-trainer formats. Rather than attempting to deliver bespoke interventions across every cooperative simultaneously, the goal is to create shared learning environments—one in the north, one in the south—that bring together technical staff and selected producers from multiple organizations.
The emphases will be practical: drying protocols, fermentation control, defect reduction, and consistency. Not experimental for novelty’s sake, but rigorous enough to raise the ceiling for Tier I and Tier II lots while also lifting baseline quality across broader volumes. Follow-up support during harvest will reinforce those learnings (the notion of a harvest chat bot has been uttered with various levels of seriousness), and participants will be encouraged to remain connected as a cohort—sharing observations, challenges, and results in real time.
Importantly, this work will be designed within the constraints of Progreso’s existing financing tools. Where Blueprint funds cannot be used—for equipment or fixed assets—we are actively exploring complementary pathways, including third-party microcredit and cooperative co-investment, to ensure that training is matched with the tools required to apply it.
Finally, 2026 will mark a step toward deeper engagement at the producer level—not through exclusivity, but through visibility. As systems improve and quality becomes more repeatable, the opportunity emerges to recognize individual farmers within cooperative structures, linking their work more directly to market outcomes without undermining collective strength. One idea that crystallized in a recent meeting had to do with the establishment of demonstration plots, supervised by producers who already have strong community recognition, as means of showcasing exemplary practices without the imposition of external consultants based abroad. Although this idea presents its own challenges and shouldn’t be regarded as a sure thing for 2026, it’s this sort of thinking that has led to community-led development in other parts of the world (foremost on the mind is western Kenya and the work transpiring there with help from The Chain Collaborative) to great effect, and we are always eager to connect these sorts of dots.
But alas—all of this forward-facing work sits alongside the present-tense reality that coffee is still moving, that there is still nuance to be accounted for within this season itself. The final shipments now coming together from Lagunas de los Cóndores, San Fernando, and Huadquiña are by no means epilogues or afterthoughts to a simmering season that started with a bang—these are snapshots of yet more geographies, harvest calendars, and rhythms we’re eager to better understand as our work in Peru builds over time.
Starting in the north, the final coffees from Lagunas de los Cóndores arrive from a part of Peru that is often grouped with Cajamarca or Jaén for convenience, but in practice behaves very differently. Amazonas—particularly Luya and the Chachapoyas highlands, once home to the last major Andean society to resist incorporation into the Inca Empire—is much further east than our Cajamarca partners, closer to the Andean-Amazonian transition zone, with cooler nights, higher average humidity, and a more fragmented, less commercialized logistics landscape. Where the Jaén-nucleus zone has earlier harvests, larger volumes, and decades of buyer familiarity, Amazonas coffees tend to move more quietly and more slowly, and can yield more structurally delicate profiles when handled well.
That context matters for Lagunas specifically, as operating in Luya has historically meant fewer institutional supports and higher logistical friction, and until recently, much of the cooperative’s work was necessarily focused on stabilization rather than differentiation. With Progreso’s involvement beginning in the early 2020s, Lagunas organized a high-elevation quality program in 2021 aimed at varietal renewal, agroforestry, and longer-term productivity. The trees planted under that program are now entering production, meaning the cooperative is transitioning from investment to output—a shift that brings both promise and pressure.
The Café Familia lots from Pisuquia and Providencia reflect this moment. These are washed coffees with lift and precision rather than overt punch—peach, apricot, orange, melon, honey, black tea—held together by clean acidity and a persistent, tea-like finish. The sweetness is integrated rather than glossy, and the aromatics unfold more shyly than many Cajamarca counterparts. The Café Luya Chillaos community lot extends that regional fingerprint in a slightly more classical direction—still dense and sweet, but leaning toward deeper, confectionary impressions like almond, cola, fudge, caramel, nougat, and dried fruit, with a heavier mouthfeel and an altogether less sparkly presence. Together, these coffees underscore that Amazonas is not a monotonal sub-region, but one capable of either finesse or heft depending on elevation, exposure, and post-harvest choices—and that the limiting factor going forward is less agronomic potential than the ability for post-harvest practices and market access to keep pace.
Moving south, the coffees from Huadquiña Cooperative in Santa Teresa operate on a different axis altogether, despite many overlapping observations on the sensory sheets. Founded in the mid-1960s, Huadquiña is the longest-standing cooperative in the area and combines deep institutional history with renewed investment in physical infrastructure. A central wet mill, storage facilities, and transport capacity give it more control over post-harvest processes than many peers, while quality control is internally managed through an active cupping team.
Nearby, San Fernando Cooperative contributes a broader spectrum that showcases both scale and specificity within a single organization. With more than 450 members, a functioning cupping lab, and long-standing commercial relationships, San Fernando operates as one of the most mature and transparent cooperatives in the region. Its strength lies in consistency and governance, reliably producing solid mid-80s community coffees alongside a smaller but growing set of higher-scoring microlots. Its constraints are less about knowledge than about aligning ambition with realistic timelines across such a large membership.
As is already well known by specialty buyers attentive to Peru, the Cusco–Inkawasi region sits at daunting elevations, with most of these coffees comfortably exceeding 2,000 meters and some pushing several hundred higher. In tandem with the logistical realities of their export cycle, that altitude makes these coffees more than worth the wait as they bridge winter into spring with their forthcoming arrivals.
Taken as a whole, this season has been about acclimation and alignment—between organizations, incentives, timelines, and expectations. The coffees that have already landed and those now on the water reflect that work in concrete form, and plans for what’s to come assure real continuity. As we turn our attention toward the next harvest already taking shape, the aim is not to outpace what’s been built or to remotely echo the degree of growth seen in the past season, but to continue reinforcing the value of the work and nurturing its sustainability—carefully, collaboratively, and with a long view toward durability over spectacle in this spectacular place.
No country claims a larger share of our collective energy than Ethiopia.
It is by far our biggest import source, densest offer sheet, and has been our most luminously showcased origin for several years running. With our allied Co Qua office in the capital city of Addis Ababa plus frequent visits from our North American team members, it is also a place to which most of us develop an earnest personal connection—when goals are achieved celebrations feel earned, and when the opposite is true we are wracking our brains as to why.
Heading into 2026, our goals largely echo those of last year, and this is intentional. With a supply chain as complex, demanding, and competitive as Ethiopia’s, we know that continuous improvement has more to do with sustaining focus than redirecting it.
With that said, in 2026 we’re aiming for:
— Even earlier shipments, with fewer springtime stragglers (more on that below)
— Continued diversification of top-lot supply chains, building upon last year’s successes while broadening the ways in which it can come to fruition to rebalance reliance on larger-scale suppliers.
Below, we’ll review the goals we had entering last year’s harvest, contextualize them against how the season unfolded, and finally resituate ourselves in the present tense.
Whether you read every word or just have time to skim, the important thing for roasters to know right now is that if you have not yet contacted your trader to express your interests for this season, now is the time to do so.
All things considered, the 24/25 season provided ample opportunity for both celebrations and wracking-of-brains. Our goals had been straightforward enough:
— Expedite shipping
— Increase volumes of single-producer washed coffees
— Ensure integrity and availability of representative samples from production through export
As for increasing volumes of single-producer washed coffees—this was largely a qualitative success, even if not to our target volume, in that many of our partners produced a greater quantity of non-naturals than in years past. A considerable share of these took the form of light-mucilage honey-processed coffees (“white honeys”), which proved a more practical middle ground between the sensory aims of a washed coffee and the realities of limited access to clean water. In practice, this meant highly demucilaged, low-water processes that—where they worked—produced some of the most compelling cups of the season. Several producers we had supported ahead of the harvest with pulpers and motors delivered these standouts, including successful small runs from partners like Bekele Kechara, Bekele Belacho, and Basha Bekele, among others. The limitation, however, was scale: many of these lots amounted to one or two-bag experiments rather than focal aspects of our programming. Taken on their own, they were compelling proofs-of-concept if not cumulatively viable offers—a meaningful step toward greater processing diversity and a stronger, more varied top-lot landscape that we aim to continue building upon in the season ahead.
The third of the core stated goals for last year—to preserve representative samples from the farm-level through export—cannot be regarded as successful. In some senses, the competing priorities of expediency and continuity bristled against each other, resulting in a much higher success rate among larger, full-container purchases requiring minimal consolidation, which logically produced cleaner handoffs and more dependable continuity between what we approved and what ultimately shipped. But within the more complex scenarios—consolidated shipments across the smallholder menu—sample flow simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of decision-making, and offer quality was too often an unreliable proxy for the exportable lot. The eventual net effect became predictable relatively early in the process: approvals slowed, selling sometimes ran ahead of verification, and a meaningful share of smallholder volume had to be reconsidered—underscoring why this year’s plan emphasizes earlier in-country approvals of verifiable, ready-to-ship lots.
Overall, what we’re foremost applying from the 24/25 import cycle are tactical adjustments to ease the inherent tension between our higher-level goals of supporting a diverse network of smallholder farmers while retaining the pace and quality that our roaster partners rely upon. We maintained that strong quality last year, through historically high pricing, with many producers faring very well in many respects, even as the systems to support smallholder exports proved increasingly brittle. The inevitable amplification of minor delays was not a surprise, but we’re committed this year to tightening up our on-the-ground efforts in order to more effectively offset them.
In some ways, the present moment (first week of January) is simultaneously showcasing a well-executed acceleration of our efforts while also evincing the slipperiness of striving for speed. This post, for example, is coming about two months later than its annual predecessor—but we’ve already had three North American team members in-country, with another departing next week and three more a month after that. The earliest of these visits was in October, when we hired and began to onboard a new team member, Tensay Melkie, based in the Co Qua lab in Addis. Fundamentally, Tensay was brought aboard to relieve the growing coordination bottleneck of handling sample movement, paperwork, and exporter consolidation toward the overall goal of getting coffees, approvals, and information moving more swiftly and in parallel.
In November, as was the case last year, our focus was on the West—booking washed coffees early and establishing the groundwork for rapid rolling approvals through the rest of the season, just as harvest activity there moved from a mid/late November start into an early December peak. December extended that momentum, with washed western approvals paired with first-round smallholder offer evaluations of both washed and natural processes, though under markedly different economic conditions than the prior cycle: the birr now trading around 155 to the dollar (with parallel rates higher), compared to black-market rates just over 114 during the 2023–24 harvest, alongside tighter bank financing, higher interest rates, and new collateral requirements. These pressures have translated directly to cherry prices—roughly 155–200 birr in the West and 175–250 birr in the South this season, compared to 70–75 birr/kg in the West and 65–68 birr/kg in the South at comparable points last year—altering buying behavior in both regions.
That backdrop is also important context for understanding a strategic wrinkle that inevitably emerged in November, as the spread between domestic minimum cherry prices for Grades 1 and 2 coffees from both the West and the South largely collapsed—a movement with scarce historical precedent. In effect, this erased much of the former value proposition for G2s altogether and brought long-economically disparate regions into near parity. Since then, as the broader “C” market has softened meaningfully (largely due to the eventual full tariff relief), most Ethiopian differentials have drifted lower in tandem—though not exactly in lockstep: top southern naturals and washed lots have retained relative strength even as mid-tier grades compressed. Overall, this leaves a narrower margin for error—reinforcing the need to cup decisively, lean into the most compelling southern offers, and be willing to leave behind coffees that no longer make sense.
Now in January, with the harvest moving somewhat more slowly than initially envisioned due to producer hesitation at these still-elevated prices, attention is shifting toward pre-shipment approvals across the West alongside initial selections from the South, setting the stage for February and March to move to execution, with southern pre-ships and natural offers coming into view and early shipments beginning to move.
Speed is a complicated idea when it comes to Ethiopian exporting, and our key means of continuing to achieve our goals is to refine our understanding of it. Last year’s mixture of successes and shortcomings made clear that careful sequencing eclipses outright urgency: coffees that moved quickly did so because decisions were made and conveyed closer to the point of preparation, in practice often due to economies of scale. By contrast, coffees that remained undecided or caught amidst partially assembled boxes became disproportionately exposed to delay—particularly once container availability tightened in late spring. Heading into 2026, our emphasis is therefore on making moves sooner—not winning the race in an outright sprint, but blatantly angling for a head start wherever we can get it.
This shift is also informing how we approach sampling and commitments across the menu. One of the clearest takeaways from last season, as described above, was that offer quality—especially in more complex, consolidated smallholder scenarios—did not always translate cleanly to the exportable lot. In response, we are tightening the basis on which decisions are made, favoring coffees that are more fully prepared, more clearly separated, and more verifiable at the point of approval. This does not eliminate risk, nor does it solve the macro-structural challenges inherent to the system, but it does narrow the window in which trust can sneak away from verification. Practically speaking, this means fewer speculative commitments and a greater reliance on coffees that can be approved, milled, and shipped without prolonged handoffs or renegotiation.
The same pragmatism informs how we think about scale—particularly within the smallholder portion of the menu. For 2026, we don’t want to shrink away from processing diversity or smallholder engagement, but we need to be clearer-eyed about what it takes for those efforts to translate into dependable volume, which in turn yields dependable logistics: lot sizes that can survive milling, timelines that align with shipping constraints, and approvals that can be finalized before the inevitable seasonal bottlenecks set in. In some cases, that could mean allowing promising experiments to remain experimental until the surrounding infrastructure catches up.
Consolidation, too, is being approached with greater caution. The past season reinforced how quickly complexity compounds when multiple exporters, licenses, and lots converge on a single container. Even minor delays—an approval that slips, a lot that isn’t quite ready—can stall an entire shipment once container availability contracts. While consolidation writ large of course remains unavoidable, our posture this year is to reduce fragility wherever possible: fewer late-season decisions, clearer readiness requirements, and a greater willingness to accept that not every coffee can be rescued if deadlines pass.
Right now, having looked back, around, and ahead, we are firmly in the heads down stage of the cycle, and despite all of the stressors and stakes, it’s an invigorating place to be. When next we check on this Ethiopian season, we’ll sustain this gimmick of optical directionality, finally looking up, hopefully at first container ETA’s, stat-packed offer sheets, and a smarter, ever-more aligned team in the midst of a job well done.
Till then, the core thing for roasters to keep in mind is that Ethiopia’s pricing has shifted upwards. While individual lots and regions are at different levels outright, the historical differences between grades, regions, and processes have compressed, blurring conventional notions of value pockets. In that context, aligning expectations early around timing, pricing, and style will matter more than ever.
To close this piece out with some broadly sequenced producer callouts: western washed coffees are pacing toward April–June arrivals, generally landing in the mid-5s to low-6s, with lots from producers like Musa Abalulesa, Mustefa Abakeno, Sali Negash, and Habtamu Fikadu among the first dispatches. Western naturals follow shortly behind into late spring and early summer, with coffees from Abdulwahid Sheriff, Damitew Hailu, Abo Hussein, Reshad Ababulgu, and again Mustefa Abakeno showing strong continuity. Southern washed coffees should then shape up for May–July arrival windows at higher price bands, anchored by offerings from Getachew Zeleke, Tagel Alemayehu, Mullugeta Muntasha, Habtamu Fikado, and the Layo Teraga Cooperative. Southern naturals—particularly those sourced from smaller producers—will inevitably land last, stretching through the summer and into September, with coffees from Bensa-area partners such as Basha Bekele, Bekele Belaycho, Tuke Yute, Matte Mattios, Bekele Kachara, Belayneh Bariso, Tomas Genamo, and Nguisse Nare, as well as Yirgacheffe producers like Shibru Dube, Yohanis Dogoma, Mengeshe Gumi, and Fikadu Lege.
As you navigate Ethiopia this year—whether reassessing menu positions, adjusting aspired release timing, or simply recalibrating expectations—we encourage you to be in touch ASAP, and we will happily walk through what’s shaping up by region, process, and producer as the season unfolds.
If you would like more than 8 samples, please contact a trader directly.